Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Raging Pride of the Ruling Class

 

"Friday, April 20, was Hitler's fifty-sixth birthday, and the Soviets sent him a birthday present in the form of an artillery barrage right into the heart of the city, while the Western Allies joined in with a massive air raid.

The radio announced that Hitler had come out of his safe bomb-proof bunker to talk with the fourteen to sixteen year old boys who had 'volunteered' for the 'honor' to be accepted into the SS and to die for their Fuhrer in the defense of Berlin. What a cruel lie! These boys did not volunteer, but had no choice, because boys who were found hiding were hanged as traitors by the SS as a warning that, 'he who was not brave enough to fight had to die.'

When trees were not available, people were strung up on lamp posts. They were hanging everywhere, military and civilian, men and women, ordinary citizens who had been executed by a small group of fanatics. It appeared that the Nazis did not want the people to survive because a lost war, by their rationale, was obviously the fault of all of us. We had not sacrificed enough and therefore, we had forfeited our right to live, as only the government was without guilt."

Dorothea von Schwanenfluegel, The Battle of Berlin, 1966

"When narcissists fail they will falsely claim that everything is fine and that there is nothing wrong. They will try to misdirect us or claim there is nothing to the allegations or circumstances. Any evidence presented, and those that present, it will be attacked aggressively and vindictively. They will seek to have it invalidated or claim that it is false, fake, or a product of vague conspiracies. As they lash out with vindictiveness, the malignant narcissist will trumpet their greatness, their real or imagined achievements, and portray themselves as worthy of being revered rather than reviled.

As circumstances become dire, the narcissist will not take any responsibility — ever. They will seek to find someone to blame for their troubles or downfall, preferably someone that cannot defend themselves. A scapegoat is always useful and when there is not a real one, one will be invented. In the process of casting blame, even the most loyal and stalwart will be discarded and denigrated with reptilian indifference.

Expect lies to increase and to be repeated exponentially. They will, even in light of factual evidence to the contrary, lie more profusely and adamantly. The narcissist will expect supporters, the unethical, and enablers to lie for them. If the narcissist is going to be brought down, they will also seek to bring everyone else around them down to vindictively make them suffer. As the end nears, the suffering of others is paramount to the malignant narcissist. It is their way of elevating themselves by malevolently paying back society with even more suffering.

Joe Navarro, FBI Behavioural Analysis Veteran, When the Narcissist Fails, Psychology Today, 2 January 2024

"The evil in this world is committed by the Pharisees of our own day, the self-righteous who think they are without sin because they are unwilling to suffer the discomfort of self-examination.  The evil hate the light — the light of goodness that shows them up, the light of scrutiny that exposes them, the light of truth that penetrates their deception.”

M. Scott Peck, People of the Lie, 1983
 

Stocks dipped again today, but came back a little bit into the late trading hours.

Gold and silver rallied higher, with silver tagging 93 intraday.

Remarkable.

Bitcoin has broken up and out of its short term trading range.   Let's see if it can sustain it.  It's impressive that it not following along with the NDX. 

It's a tale of two markets.  The overnight global market, and the daylight New York and London markets.

Big moves are coming this year, and big events that may surprise and shock us. 

Have a pleasant evening. 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Hide Us from the Wrath of the Lamb

 

"Upon a high throne I saw a man sitting,
Whom a multitude of angels adore,
     singing in unison:
'Behold Him, the name of Whose empire is forever.
Sing joyfully to God, all you lands;
serve the Lord with gladness.'
Upon a high throne I saw a man sitting,
Whom a multitude of angels adore,
     singing in unison:
'Behold Him, the name of Whose empire is forever.'"

"Now the end is at hand.  Now it is our task to find one another again, to spread information from person to person, to keep a steady purpose, and to allow ourselves no rest until the last man is persuaded of the urgent need of his struggle against this system."

The White Rose, Second Leaflet, Munich 1942

"Then the kings of the earth, the elite, the military commanders, the rich, the powerful, and their every servant and free person hid themselves in caves and mountain crags. They cried out to the mountains and to the rocks, 'Fall on us, and hide us from the face of the one who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb. The great day of their awesome judgement has come, and who can stand against it?'”

Revelation 6:15-17

"The barbarian hopes — and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too.  He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being.  We sit by and watch the barbarian.  We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid.  We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes; we laugh.  But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.”

Hilaire Belloc, This and That and the Other, 1912


Gold and silver rallied sharply, but were then whittled down during the day and taken into the red in the late afternoon.

The world is buying precious metals.  The NY-London kleptoplex is trying to maintain their manipulative pool as the base of its physical metals inventory melts away.

Oh, Jesse, do you expect us to believe this?   No, I expect you to sit back and continue believing the lies. It doesn't matter what you think.  It matters what is. This is the first law of successful investing.

Stocks jumped up to new highs, and then flopped in the afternoon.

Trump goes on TV tonight to 'talk about Iran.'   

The riots in Iran were another violent attempt at a 'color revolution' being spearheaded by MI6, Mossad and the CIA.  It seems to have flopped.  

Most of the time Trump changes his mind and delivers a rambling fantasy about how great things are now that he is in charge.  He *might* do something else.  I think we need to stay agile.

We'll have to wait and see. 

There will be a stock market option expiration on Friday. 

The mispricing of risk is profound, and increasing, fed by lies and bully boy tactics.

It will end badly.  

Narcissists do not have friends.   And the denizens of Wall Street and the City are hyenas. 

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - And When You Have Returned to the Faith

 

“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat. But I have prayed that your own faith may not fail. And once you have returned to the faith, you must stand firm and strengthen your brothers.'  Peter replied, 'Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.' And Jesus said, 'Amen I say to you, before the cock crows, you will deny three times that you even know me.'”

Luke 22:31-32

"A short while later someone else saw him and said, 'You too are one of them.' Peter answered, 'My friend, I am not.' About an hour later, still another one insisted, 'I'm sure this man too was with him, for he also is a Galilean.' But Peter said, 'My friend, I do not know what you are talking about.'

Just as he was saying this, the cock crowed, and the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the words of the Lord, how he had said, 'Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.' And Peter went out, and wept bitterly."

Luke 22:58-62

"They spend their days in prosperity, and slide down quietly into the abyss.  They say to God, 'Leave us alone!  We do not want to learn your ways.  Who is God that we should serve him? And what would we gain by praying to him?'" 

Job 21:12-16

“The last moments before damnation are not often so dramatic.  Often the man knows with perfect clarity that some still possible action of his own will could yet save him.  But he cannot make this knowledge real to himself.  Some tiny habitual sensuality, some resentment, the indulgence of some fatal lethargy, seems to him at that moment more important than the choice between total joy and total destruction.

With eyes wide open, seeing that the endless terror is just about to begin and yet, for the moment, unable to feel terrified, he watches passively, not moving a finger for his own rescue, while the last links with joy and reason are severed, and drowsily sees the trap close upon his soul.”

C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 1945

"“But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does.  When that happens, it is the end of the world.  God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else—something it never entered your head to conceive—comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? 

For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature.  It will be too late then to choose your side.  That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance."

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1944


The markets plunged over night.  Trump shocked the financial world by invoking a clumsy criminal probe of the Fed chairman Jerome Powell, a poorly disguised attempt to co-opt the decision making of the Federal Reserve.  A number of government organizations have already been corrupted.  His people are feeling unstoppable.

This too will pass. But a significant amount of damage is being done to innocent people.   And there is a corrosive moral hazard that remains if lawlessness goes unrecognized and unpunished.  It will happen again.

There will be a stock option expiration this Friday.

But the mispriced risks of geopolitical and economic disruptions are profound, and building. 

Stocks are being supported by Bessent and the Exchange Stabilization Fund.  It couldn't be more obvious.

Why do you think Warren Buffet, the value investor, is sitting on a record amount of cash, having eliminated much of the fund's exposure to counterparty risk. 

You saw what happened when the fundamentals of a market, the silver market for example, are stifled over time by a determined manipulation.   It breaks out explosively.

The same thing is going to happen with stock market prices, and perhaps bond prices.   When the pressures build up sufficiently to overwhelm the market rigging, the risk markets will crater.  

You may not believe it, but you probably didn't believe in the manipulation of the precious metals either.

Remember one another in your prayers, as I remember you.  

If you have lost your way, now is the time to come home and accept forgiveness with an honest heart. 

God stands before the nations in judgement, and none may stand against him.  

But he delights to welcome you, his children, into his kingdom.  And that is enough. 

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Painting Bedlam with Blood

 

"Seneca and Burrus dithered but did not object when Nero asked their advice on how to finish his mother off.  Younger courtiers jumped into the gap, and made sure that Agrippina did not survive the night.  Seneca came out of this affair both morally tainted, and with less of the emperor's esteem.

His stature was still an asset to the regime, however, and Nero put him to work drafting a letter justifying the killing to the Senate.  He had to claim that Nero had acted in self-defense against a dangerous woman, but not by celebrating the death of a mother.  It did not impress the Senate, though only a hardcore stoic named Thrasea Paetus showed explicit disapproval of the blatant propaganda.

Seneca had made the bargain that many good men have made when agreeing to aid bad regimes.  On the one hand, their presence strengthens the regime and helps it endure.  But their moral influence may also improve the regime's behavior or save the lives of its enemies.  For many, this has been a bargain worth making, even if it has cost them—as it may have cost Seneca—their immortal soul.

The Rome he has been trained to serve, the Rome of Augustus and Germanicus, was gone. In its place stood Neropolis, ruled by a megalomaniac brat.”

James Romm, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero, 2014 

"Hell for all eternity, for so little in exchange. It is true in many respects he assumed the role of the charlatan, yet how apropos, considering his willingness to follow the Father of Lies and deception. If there are damned souls in Hell, it is because men blind themselves.”

E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World, 2008 

"The end result was to be a new Imperial Order and a New World Empire run by elite, self-perpetuating oligarchies from the leading nations of the earth."

Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, 1966 

"And the devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their splendour.  ‘All of this I will give to you,’ he said, ‘if you will fall down and worship me.’"

Matthew 4:8-9

“Blood and power intoxicate; they help to develop callousness and debauchery.  The mind then becomes capable of the most abnormal cruelty, which it regards pleasure; the man and the citizen are swallowed up in the tyrant; and the return to human dignity, repentance, moral resurrection, becomes almost impossible."

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the House of the Dead, 1862

"There is nothing of heaven in the words of the eloquent, or the deeds of the powerful, or the counsels of the wise, or the resolves of the lordly, or the pomp of the wealthy.  And yet the Ever-blessed Spirit of God is here; the Presence of the Eternal Son, ten times more glorious, more powerful than when He trod the earth in our flesh, is with us.  

Let us ever bear in mind this divine truth, — the more secret God's hand is, the more powerful — the more silent, the more awful."

John Henry Newman, PPS Vol 4, Sermon 17

"And Peter understood that neither Nero, nor all his legions, could overcome the living truth — that they could not overwhelm it with tears or blood, and that now its victory was beginning.  That city of pride, of crime, of wickedness, and of a lust for power, was beginning to be His city."

Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis, 1905


Stocks rallied up to new highs.

VIX fell.

The Dollar maintains the 99 handle.

Gold and silver bounced back.

The people of this world are taken with a greed for riches, and the lust for power. 

Ideology wrings the life from their withered principles through a lens of willful deception.  

The sun rises with the awful silence of God. though they paint the walls of their Bedlam with darkness.

And so the dawn will come.   

"It is better to be a child of God, than king of the whole world." Aloyisus de Gonzaga

Have a pleasant weekend.